Higher speed optical transport over long distances requires powerful forward error correction (FEC). Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with soft decision decoder are believed to be promising candidates to help meet such requirements. This is due—in part—to their relatively low complexity and large error correction gain.
Prior investigations have shown that carefully designed QC-LDPC codes provide comparable performance to other types of LDPC codes, while their highly structured pattern makes QC-LDPC codes more hardware friendly. More recent studies have shown that large girth and long codeword QC-LDPC code may provide decoded BER (bit error ratio) performance of below 10−15 without error floor. Such LDPC codes are believed to be the promising candidates for advanced optical transport applications.
As recognized by those skilled in the art, implementing such advanced LDPC codes with large girth and long codeword is a challenging problem. Aspects of the problem include the requirement for high throughput while reducing fabrication cost(s) such as may result from fitting any design in to a single programmable device such as field programmable gate array (FPGA).
Consequently, methods, structures or techniques that address such aspects would represent a significant advance in the art.